Use of computerized databases as information repositories has increased tremendously in the recent past. Such databases are used to store all sorts of information. In order for all the stored information to be useful, a user must be able to find desired information quickly and accurately and then that information must be displayed in a manner which is easily and completely understandable to the user. As the amount of information stored in databases has increased, the difficulty of finding and displaying desired information from among the stored information has also increased.
Finding desired information involves allowing a user to be able to enter a search criteria and have a computer system analyze the search criteria and the contents of the database to find information which satisfies the entered criteria without missing any information which satisfies the criteria and also without including any information which does not satisfy the criteria. This is not a simple problem. To solve this problem, much work has been done to derive processes to retrieve desired information from such databases.
Information stored in some databases is meant to be read by humans. Such information includes textual or graphical information related to all areas of human endeavor, such as informational articles, books, photographs, illustrations, stories, opinions etc. Other such information is numeric information related, for example, to demographics, statistics, scientific analysis, business management, etc. All of this information is of interest only to humans, and must be retrieved and displayed in human readable form. Display of information meant to be read by humans in a form readable by humans is seldom a problem. Instead, retrieval is the problem. The main problem of retrieval processes for this type of information is to properly interpret the search criteria entered by the user and to properly find only relevant information and reject irrelevant information. Much work has been done in this area. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,421,008 issued May 30, 1995 to Banning et al. and entitled SYSTEM FOR INTERACTIVE GRAPHICAL CONSTRUCTION OF A DATA BASE QUERY AND STORING OF THE QUERY OBJECT LINKS AS AN OBJECT; 5,701,456, issued Dec. 23, 1997 to Jacopi et al. and entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR INTERACTIVELY FORMULATING DATABASE QUERIES USING GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATIONS; 6,094,648 issued Jul. 25, 2000 to Aalbersberg and entitled USER INTERFACE FOR DOCUMENT RETRIEVAL; 6,345,273 issued Feb. 5, 2002 to Cochran and entitled SEARCH SYSTEM HAVING USER-INTERFACE FOR SEARCHING ONLINE INFORMATION; and 6,026,388 issued Feb. 15, 2000 to Liddy et al. and entitled USER INTERFACE AND OTHER ENHANCEMENTS FOR NATURAL LANGUAGE INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM AND METHOD.
However, information stored in other databases is used within equipment and systems, and especially within computer-controlled equipment and systems, to store information necessary to operate the equipment. Such information is not inherently of interest to humans, but instead contains, for example, data, characteristics, and/or parameters used for controlling the operation of the equipment. Nevertheless, it is still necessary for a human to interact with the database. For example, initial data and data for controlling a new operational mode of the equipment or system must be entered into the database. In this case, data must be requested from the user in human readable/writable form, and then converted to machine usable form and stored in the database. Further, it is sometimes necessary for a user such as a technician to analyze the data already existing in the database to either change an existing operational mode or to optimize the database itself. In this case, information in the database must be retrieved, converted from machine usable form into human readable form.
There are usually relationships among data stored in a database. That is, some data is especially related to each other. For example, some portion of the data and parameters can be described as a linear relationship, such as data defining and controlling input, process and output processes. Other data can be related to each other hierarchically. Still other data can be related to a common feature or characteristic. Yet other data can be related to mapping between different data elements. Analysis of such data by a technician would generally involve seeking and recognizing such relationships.
One example of such a database system is the OPENLink system produced by Siemens Medical Systems, Inc. The OPENLink system is an application for facilitating exchange of data among different electronic data systems. One electronic data system transmits data to the OPENLink system in a predetermined data format via a specific communications medium and protocol acceptable to the transmitting system. The OPENLink system, in turn relays this data to a second electronic data system. The second electronic data system receives the data in a predetermined data format via a specific communications medium and protocol acceptable by the receiving system. The data format, communications medium and protocol of the receiving system are not necessarily the same as those of the transmitting system.
The OPENLink System includes a database containing a plurality of around 60 data tables containing the data required to control the processing necessary to receive, transform (if required) and transmit data among electronic data systems. In the OPENLink system, the database information necessary to perform one data communications task, from one electronic data system to another, is termed an interface. The database contains information related to a plurality of interfaces, and typically contains thousands of pieces of information, stored in the data tables in a format appropriate to control the functioning of the OPENLink system, but not for human analysis.
The OPENLink system includes a toolkit application which is used to solicit information from a user related to a new interface. Information entered by the user defines the data formats, communications media and/or protocols for the new interface, and any data conversion necessary. The solicited information is then converted into internal machine usable form and stored in the tables in the database. This toolkit application may also be used to edit the information related to a single interface at a time. However, there is no corresponding tool for analyzing the current contents of this database.
Because the information stored in such databases is not inherently of interest to humans, it is usually formatted and stored in the database a manner which allows the most efficient operation of the equipment or system. This format is most likely not in a form easily readable by humans. This makes it difficult for a human to interact with the information already stored in the database. Work has been done to allow a human to easily query information in a database and display the retrieved information.
One method for extracting and displaying information from a database is to use the OPENLink toolkit application. Use of this application presents the information to the technician in a form which is coordinated with the use of that information in the OPENLink system. In addition, this application provides protection from inadvertently changing the data in the database. However, as described above, this permits inspection and editing of database information related to only limited portions of a single interface at a time, and therefore does not permit the user to see relationships among data related to a plurality of interfaces. Thus, in order for a technician to see overall relationships, information related to each individual interface must be accessed separately, making this a slow tedious job.
Another method for extracting and displaying information from a database is to use a general purpose database management program, such as Paradox, manufactured by Corel Corporation, or Access, manufactured by Microsoft Corporation. Such products can access tables in a database and create a datasheet or data table view of the tables. Alternatively, such products can be used to generate reports on the database tables using filters and relating information in different tables. The user may then look through the displayed forms, tables or reports to identify parameters and relationships within a table or among tables. However, using this method requires a high level of knowledge about the OPENLink system and the database management program. In addition, the general purpose database management systems access the actual tables in the OPENLink database system, making it possible for a user to inadvertently change data in the database tables. Even worse, such a change may be made without coordination with other related data in the database, which would be provided by the OPENLink toolkit application. While the latter problem may be solved by using a copy of the database, copies of the tables run the risk of becoming outdated if they are not timely synchronized. Finally, this technique does not show database information in context with the information's characteristics and relationships, stored in the database.
Further work has been performed to enhance the ability to extract and display information from a generic database. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,246,410, issued Jun. 12, 2001 to Bergeron et al. and entitled METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR DATABASE ACCESS discloses a system for extracting, displaying and either replacing or updating the contents of a database table. When first invoked, an existing table may be selected, and the fields in the selected table are displayed for a user, who can select fields of interest and even associate an icon with those fields. Then, in use, a palette containing the icons related to the selected fields is displayed, and the user may drag data to or from those icons to transfer data either to or from the database and/or to manipulate the data in the database table. This method is limited to a single table. It also does not show relationships among data in the same or different tables, nor the characteristics of the data. Also, this method accesses the active data in the table, making it possible for a user to inadvertently change the data.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,038,558, issued Mar. 14, 2000 to Powers et al. and entitled EXTENSIBLE DATABASE RETRIEVAL AND VIEWING ARCHITECTURE discloses a system for accessing information in a database according to a user produced plan. This plan can include retrieval, processing and storage steps. This patent further discloses a method for generating steps which may be incorporated into the plans. This system may be adapted to information in multiple tables in a database. However, this patent does not disclose any specific steps, and in particular, does not disclose any steps for determining relationships among the data in the database.
A system which can access information in a database which is not inherently meant for humans, which can derive and sort data in a database, which can identify relationships among data stored in the database, which can display the data and relationships in a manner easily understood by humans, and which is protected against inadvertent change of data in the database is desirable.